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Friday 15th January 2016 – THE ROAD TO MONTLUCON …

… wasn’t too bad this morning. I was up bright and early … "well, maybe not so bright" – ed … at 07:00 and by 07:25 I was on the road with a nice thermal mug of hot coffee to keep me going.

I took it fairly easy and although Caliburn slipped around in a couple of places we didn’t have any big issues. Even going down the Font Nanaud wasn’t anything like the challenge that I expected it to be, and by the time that I reached whatever the name of the place is in between Marcillat and Villebret, the road was pretty clear. All in all, it only took me 10 or so minutes longer than usual and I was parked up at the hospital by 08:30 as usual.

Mind you, I’d beaten all of the staff of the day hospital into work so had to hang around 10 minutes before the doors opened up. And then, being first in, I could have my comfy spec in the armchair in the corner by the radiator and the power point.

It was the student nurse who came to fit my drain and that filled me full of foreboding. She was the one who had had three tries the other week before abandoning the job and calling for a friend. But today, to my surprise, not only did she do it in one, it was the least painful of all of them.

And here we had the confusion, much to my dismay. It was the young doctor who had telephoned yesterday to summon me to hospital, and although he had probably told the nurses that I was coming, there had been some confusion about the ordering of my blood. Consequently, I had to wait until about 11:15 for the blood to arrive. Then we had the new marvels of modern 21st-Century technology for warming up the blood – to wit – me stuffing it up my jumper.

At about 11:40, someone brought me a nice hot cup of coffee. I’d only been waiting since about 09:00 (the first time that I asked). But in the meantime I’d not been idle. I’d downloaded another whole pile of stuff from www.archive.org and now I reckon that I have a whole decent set of radio programmes to keep me company. I’ll have to check to see if I can find The Men From The Ministry because I forgot about that.

Running so late, I ordered lunch, and ended up with asparagus and tomato for starters, rice and boiled carrots with a bread roll for main course, and then apple purée and an orange for desert. Not the most exciting meal that I’ve ever had, by a long chalk, but it was quite filling and actually tasted quite nice.

It was 14:50 by the time that they had finished with me and I was really disappointed by this. But every cloud has a silver lining, for Ingrid was in the hospital and due to finish what she was doing at 15:00. So go down to the shops or have a coffee with Ingrid? No competition really, is there?

By 16:20 I was on the road and by then, the return journey was a very different story. There had been a flurry of snow in Montlucon at lunchtime and everyone had rushed to the window to see it. But by the time I reached Villebret there was much more than just a flurry and it gradually worsened the higher into the mountains that I climbed. The drag up to the Font Nanaud (height, 934 metres) was exciting, especially as there had been no snowplough or gritter south of Pionsat (I eventually met one, coming towards me from St Gervais) and I was right behind a Mercedes Vito towing a plant trailer with a mini-loader on the back.

He of course had no chance, but he did his best. Rear-wheel drive is useless in this weather when you are pulling something like that and he was sliding everywhere across the road, fighting for grip. He ought to have realised that it was pointless and should have turned round on the old railway track bed to go back down, but he pressed gamely on.

It wasn’t very long before the inevitable happened. He completely lost traction, slewed across the road and came to a shuddering stop. I couldn’t stop to help him because I would have lost traction too so I chugged on over the top and down the bank towards St Gervais.

snow january 2016 centre ornithologique st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome franceThe conditions round by St Gervais weren’t quite so bad as up on the Font, and the farther south that you travelled, the easier the route became.

By the time I got to Phoen … errr … the Centre Ornithologique, things had cleared quite considerably and the roads were much easier to move about, which was good news for me.

snow january 2016 centre ornithologique st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome franceI stopped here to take a few photographs of the snow, to record it for posterity. St Gervais, over there on the hill about 100 feet higher up than where I am, looks particularly covered and you can tell by the sky that there’s more to come.

Pulling away from here wasn’t easy either, with a couple of traction issues to get over the ridges made by the car tyres in the snow. But I was soon off and back down here to dig myself in for the foreseeable future.

I have no plans for going out anywhere else until my next hospital visit. And that’s a thought to depress just about anyone

Just in case you are wondering, we had none of the usual suspects, no family members and only one slight mention of a place of my previous existence during my nocturnal rambles of last night.

I’ve no idea where I was when I started off last night but it was a place that I certainly didn’t recognise, somewhere on the coast of the UK. It was a holiday resort, at a part of the town that was inland a little and high up with a view over the bay. There was quite a group of us and we’d heard that one of our rock heroes or bands was playing in this place at the carnival on the seafront. The word “Jubilee” was mentioned, and it turned out that Jubilee was a suburb of this particular town with access to the sea, so I was making a few enquiries to find out which trams we needed to catch to go there. There was a tram stop just outside the building where we were staying and I was trying to read the timetables and tram routes. But I was there for hours trying to find out which tram it was that went to Jubilee, with trams passing in front of me and all around me. In the end, I went back into the building, which was the hospital where I’d been a few days ago.
We then had an old woman putting in an appearance. I’ve no idea who she was but last night she was living next door to me and I had her doing quite a few of my affairs for me. I’d just turn up out of the blue and she’d do a few things for me and then I’d go off again. When I was there last time, and had her go along and do something for me, and as a reward I had paid for her haircut at the hairdressers. She said that she had only just been, so I told her to go again and have the same cut done, or something else, a second time. And so she ended up with almost no hair. She also said that next day she was going into hospital for an urgent operation but that cut no ice with me. I was supposedly in Crewe by this time, Alton Street or somewhere around there. I had wandered off somewhere and a couple of days later I was back, still looking for this Jubilee. I went into the local hospital and here I came across this woman. she’d had her surgery and I’d forgotten completely about it, so I had to pretend to be interested and to talk to her about it. I’d intended to go to see her later in the day in fact because this was really early in the morning when I arrived. But she was awake this early so we had the chat about her operation
From here I went off to work as a general handyman for some rich old lady. We were somewhere in an urban French environment and she took me with her, beckoned me to follow her around and through these old outbuildings into a large barn-type of place and through into a garage that fronted the street. I had to open the doors to let her friend in with a car. These buildings were full of what I thought were dead insects but she explained that they were immature crabs. She’d bought a huge pile of them but ended up with 100 too many but rather than take them back she’d just dumped them out of the car and they had all died. So we managed to bring the car in and then we went off, her beckoning me to follow once more up to a gallery place with a metal walkway. She’d erected a kind of metal fence around it that went around a kind of headland that she owned or had something to do with. It seemed that the neighbours had objected to the fence (it was merely strands of barbed wire) and so it had to be pulled up, so that was my job. Some guy who worked for some Civil Service body was watching me, telling me what a good job it was in the Civil Service and how I ought to apply to work there. But I was busy pulling up these stakes and coiling up this wire. He wanted to know what I was going to do with this wire so I replied that I was going to keep it – one of the perks of my job. He had quite a moan about that. meantime, I’d noticed that this wire was swinging around all over the road so I had to go down and coil it up properly. I’d also had to consult my telephone to see what was going on because someone else had started this job with me but had gone again, so I wanted to see where he was. However, I somehow managed to connect to a film on this telephone – a black-and-white film of the 30s with some film star appearing in it and I couldn’t stop it – each time that I tried to press “stop” or to switch it off, I had a “buy it now” screen. The volume was set quite loud – I couldn’t lower that and everyone in the area could hear it.

And so despite my trip to Montlucon today, I reckon that I’m still cracking up far more miles during the night. It’s hardly any surprise that I’m so exhausted these days.

But I do wonder what it is that they are putting in my food to make all of this happen.

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Thursday 31st December 2015 – I HAVE SPENT NEW YEAR’S EVE …

… in some strange places, but this evening will be about the strangest. I’m back in Montlucon, back in the hospital and in the casualty department connected up to a couple of pochettes of blood.

This morning I had the usual blood test and at 17:15 I had the phone call. Apparently my blood count has collapsed and it’s down to 7.2, which means that in 4 days I’ve lost 15% of my haemoglobin. There’s no Day Hospital tomorrow (yes, I now know the reason why I have blood tests on Mondays and Thursdays – that’s because the Day Hospital is usually open from Monday to Friday, Bank Holidays excepted of course, and they can call me in the next day if the results are bad) and so it has to be done in Casualty.

And so I rode off into a rather symbolic sunset – symbolic in many senses in that it’s the final sunset of 2015, bringing down the night onto the end of a rather significant year for me, and that I have a rather uncomfortable feeling that it’s bringing down the night onto a significant chapter in my life and that whatever happens to me once a new dawn breaks will be completely different to that which I’ve experienced to date.

new years eve sunset site ornithologique st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome franceNevertheless, at the Site Ornithologique just outside St Gervais, one of my favourite photography spots, I stopped to take a photo of the sun dipping down under the horizon.

And I wasn’t alone here either. Liz was here too. She was on her way back from the airport at Limoges, having taken her family back for their aeroplane to East Midlands, and she was impressed by the view too. We had a little chat and then I was on my way.

Evening meal for me, my “special treat” for New Year’s Eve, was a large packet of crisps, a packet of biscuits and a banana. There wasn’t any time to prepare any food back at Liz and Terry’s because the hospital wanted me in and out before the midnight rush of drunks began, and so I had to pick up what I could find en route.

At the hospital, I was lucky enough to find a parking space for Caliburn close to the casualty entrance, and once I was inside, I was whisked straight into the casualty ward and prepared for transfusion, with the second-most-painful insertion of a drain. And this is when I discovered that the claim, on the telephone earlier, that “the blood has already been ordered” was somewhat economical with the truth. It didn’t arrive until 21:30 in fact.

And in the meantime, I was in a small room right by the entrance to the Casualty Department. Ambulances, with blue flashing lights and sometimes sirens, were pulling up right outside my window and the electric door into the Department was right next to the door to my room, which was open. Each time I closed my eyes, an ambulance would pull up, the electric door would open, and I’d be wide awake. And then I’d close my eyes again ready to doze off and the procedure would be repeated. And as New Years Eve approached and the stream became a flood, I gave it up as a bad job and asked for a coffee.

Yes, some let the New Year in with a glass of champagne. I let it in with a plastic beaker of coffee.

By 01:30 they had finished with me, and they offered me a bed for the night in the ward at the back of the Casualty Department. I didn’t really feel too much like the drive back to Liz and Terry’s and in any case they would be well asleep by the time that I returned, so I gladly accepted the offer.

And here I’m staying until tomorrow.

Mind you, it’s hardly surprising that I wasn’t up to the drive back. I’d done quite enough driving last night on my nocturnal travels.

I’m not sure now exactly how I started out on my travels but I was definitely in my chocolate-brown Cortina 2000E, TNY143M, that has featured quite a few times just recently on my nocturnal voyages and I’m not sure why. But as our story unfolds, there was a huge argument in a car park that abutted, albeit about 20 feet higher up, onto the street where I was parked. It concerned some kind of illicit behaviour involving a taxi company or two, something that would be of great interest to me of course, being in the taxi business, and a girl was having a huge argument with the driver of a big black saloon car parked on the edge of this car park. The net result of this argument was that she grabbed hold of the driver’s briefcase and flung it high into the air. The case landed at my feet with the papers scattered everywhere so I quickly gathered up the papers, half-expecting the driver to come charging down the bank after his possessions. Instead, he got into his car and cleared off quickly leaving me holding all of the evidence, which would make good reading in the taxi licensing office. I walked back up the hill to the pizza place on the corner of the main road and ordered, inexplicably, a chicken pizza. While it was being prepared, I reckoned that I had better go and recover the Cortina and bring it up outside the pizza place where I could keep a better eye on it and its contents. So back in the pizza place and the server asked me if I wanted ham and some other meat on it – they hadn’t even finished preparing it, never mind cooked it. I had a feeling that this would go on for ever and I didn’t have the time to spare.
So never mind – I’d planned to go to the cinema that evening but I could go earlier and I could watch the film twice. But this meant going on the bus so off I went. And at the end of the first showing, it meant going back on the bus again, doing a round trip and then back to the cinema. And here on the bus this time around I met a girl, someone who had made a couple of cameo appearances in my travels during the autumn. The bus took us on a guided tour of the town and stopped at a big desolate area of waste land, with the driver telling us that this was formerly the old medieval centre of the town which had been demolished and a modern town centre built elsewhere. We were being asked all kinds of quiz questions about street names and the like too.
After the cinema I took this girl home with me, which I realised too late was probably not a good thing to do, because before going out I’d emptied out the van and having nowhere to store the stuff, I’d stacked it, all kinds of rubbish too, into the living room so there was hardly anywhere to sit. My Aunt Doreen (she who hanged herself almost 20 years ago) had been there and so I asked the girl if she would write a note of appreciation to Doreen. However, we couldn’t find a single blank page in any of the notebooks in which we looked. Clearly we weren’t doing so well here. I also asked someone else, who was present at the time, to take out a pile of vehicle hubcaps and dump them in the bin, but then I had a change of mind, thinking that they all might come in useful at some time.
From here I drove back to the family pile in Shavington, followed by my father and my brother (no idea how come they have appeared on my travels). And near the top of Gresty Bank before the corner where Dubberley’s farm used to be, in the road in the southbound lane was a woman with a trestle table doing the washing up. We had to wait until she had finished but she took so long to arrange her crockery that I emptied her washing-up bowl for her. However, the woman in the car immediately behind me was so close that I couldn’t reverse my car enough to go around this obstacle, so the car and I had to duck under the table.
Back at the family pile, I was horrified to see not only the state of the place but the fact that the house was stinking hot with the electric heating going full blast – so hot in fact that all of the windows had been opened despite the heaters being on. There was so much waste and untidiness (and the untidiness must have been bad if it upset me) that I reckoned that my father would be appalled when he arrived. But it was my brother who appeared first, so I challenged him about it, but he replied that our father wouldn’t be coming – he had gone elsewhere. In the hallway there was cat food all over the place but he said that it was the fault of my cat, who wouldn’t eat any of it.

The alarm went off at this point and after a few minutes spent gathering my wits (it doesn’t take very long as there aren’t too many of those) I came downstairs to wait for the nurse and the prise de sang.

Once he had gone, I could have breakfast but I’d run out of muesli so I had to borrow some of Terry’s. And then we had the confusion as all of our visitors prepared to leave. I had a few big hugs, which was nice as I don’t have too many of those these days, and it goes without saying that Strawberry Moose had quite a few too.

Once everyone had left, Terry and I had a coffee and a relax and then I went off to St Gervais with a shopping list from Liz. I try my best to do some shopping here once a week – it’s the least that I can do to recompense Liz and Terry for all of the effort they are making in looking after me. Mind you, I did manage to buy the wrong milk and so I rather blotted my copy-book here.

Vegan cheese on toast for lunch (I’m becoming quite partial to this these days) and then I sat down to alternately have a little doze, drink a coffee and to continue to write up my notes from my voyage around Canada in the Autumn.

And this was when I received “the call” …

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Monday 27th October 2014 – RED SKY AT NIGHT …

sunset auzances creuse birdwatching ornithological centre st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome france… means that Auzances is on fire.

Yes, on the way back home this evening as the sun was setting, I stopped off at my favourite haunt, the St Gervais Ornithological Centre to take one or two photos. The sun setting below the horizon in the clouds in the general direction of Auzances was particularly impressive.

birdwatching ornithological centre st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome franceThe view in the opposite direction, while not being quite as spectacular, was nevertheless quite impressive in its own right.

Here, with the evening drawing on and the damp mist slowly rising out of the fields, the Puy de Dome looks as if it is slowly disappearing from view behind a kind of diaphanous veil. It gives a completely different aspect to this view, of which you have seen dozens of examples over the years.

This morning we went to record the Radio Anglais programmes at Marcillat-en-Cembraille for Radio Tartasse. We had a few technical issues but they were resolved by simply returning to the very first version of the studio’s computer program. This new upgrade has caused nothing but problems.

We went from there to Clermont-Ferrand and the Auchan where I did a big pile of shopping. I’d run out of oats for my muesli and lentils for my curries, and so I needed to stock up. I also took advantage of the proximity of the Auchan to the recording studios at Gerzat to do a mega-shop.

The radio session at Gerzat went surprisigly well – in fact four programmes of 15 minutes each took just 1 hour and 5 minutes to record in total. It’s never happened like this before and I wish that it had happened like this that time just before I went to Canada.

Afterwards, we celebrated by going for coffee at Menetrol and doing a lap around the Carrefour there to buy the things that I had forgotten.

And after dropping Liz off, I came home via the birdwatching site at St Gervais d’Auvergne.

Tonihgt, I’ve enrolled in another Higher Education course. The University of Birmingham, in its Future Learn Programme is offering a course in the Development of Aviation in World War I and there was a free place even though the course started a week ago. This kind of thing is right up my Alley as you know and I couldn’t resist the opportunity.

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Friday 17th October 2014 – IT’S ALL EXCITEMENT HERE.

Yes, it’s all happening here at Pionsat.

intermarche launderette pionsat puy de dome franceI went a’shopping this afternoon at Pionsat on my way home, and look what I found in a lean-to on the car park at the Intermarché.

Yes, Pionsat now has its own launderette. Not much of a one, that’s for sure, but a launderette just the same. And not only that, there’s a 18kg machine here. That’s good news for me because I haven’t washed the cover on my bed settee in the five years that I’ve had it because I’ve not found a machine big enough to take it since the launderette in Montlucon closed down all those years ago.

And so on the next fine day that we have when I’m at home, guess what I’ll be doing?

And so I did say “on my way home”. That’s because I’ve been out and about this morning. Terry rang me up to ask if I could help him cut some wood.

gorges de la sioule st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome franceIt was a warm morning today, and with all of the dampness that we’ve had these last few days, it wasn’t difficult to guess where the Gorge de la Sioule is. There is the mist gradually rising up out of the Gorge and dissipating into the atmosphere.

It certainly makes a good photograph, especially in the early morning.

birdwatching centre ornithologique st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome franceThe photo was taken from the birdwatching centre at St Gervais d’Auvergne, and I wasn’t alone here either. There was a pile of other photographers here admiring the view, although I’m not quite sure what it was that was of such an interest to them.

Still, chacun à son gout as they say around here.

Terry and I chopped up a good pile of wood this morning and Liz made a good lunch for us. Then they went off to the dentist and I came home, via the Intermarché at Pionsat.

Back here, I carried on with the tidying up and despite all that I’ve been doing, I can’t see any improvement, and I can’t see any empty space either. I don’t know why this should be, but there we are.

I’ll just have to keep on at it until something happens or that I die of boredom.

-1

Monday 13th October 2014 – WE WERE RADIOING TODAY

Yes, it didn’t take me long to get back into the routine, did it?

And with a reasonably-early night I managed to be up and about by 10:15 too, without the benefit of the alarm. And that gave me an hour or so to do a few things around here first.

Many of you who read the rubbish that I write elsewhere will know that I have a thing about clouds and how they reflect the skyline underneath when passing over mountainous areas.

clouds reflecting skyline puy de sancy puy de dome franceThis was quite apparent today as you can see in this photo of the Puy de Sancy taken from my favourite little spec at the bird-watching site near St Gervais.

We’ve had a fair amount of rain just recently so the sky is quite humid. Here sure enough, the moisture has condensed where the air has had to rise up over the mountains and formed clouds that reflect almost exactly the skyline underneath.

We had more vegan lasagne for lunch and then went off to Gerzat to record the Radio Anglais sessions for Radio Arverne. And just for a change, everyone was ready and everything passed off without incident. We were in and out in just an hour and 10 minutes.

While we were there, the weather had changed and we were in the rain on the way back. Liz gave me a doggy bag of leftover vegan lasagne and ginger cake, and I came back here to plot my next move.

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Monday 29th October 2012 – I’VE BITTEN …

… the bullet and lit the fire up here this evening.

Coming back from radioing, the temperature up here was 12.4°C – that’s about the limit for heat but what clinched it was the fact that I had Sunday’s pizza and garlic bread to cook.

It’s cheaper (like “cost = nil”) to cook them in the little oven on top of the woodstove. In no time at all the temperature up here was a balmy (or is that “barmy”?) 20.4°C and the pizza and garlic bread were done to a turn.

Not only that, the kettle on the top of the stove heated the water to a respectable washing-up type of temperature and so this is not only the first day of heat for winter 2012, it’s also the first day of no bottle gas.

A bottle of gas for cooking costs me about €32 and lasts me roughly 200 days. That’s about €0:16 per day that I’m saving.

Add to that the fact that a bottle of gas (at €32) lasted about 20 days in the old gas heater, then I’ve saved €1:60 per day on heating – a total of €1:76 per day in total.

The stove cost me €279, which means that at €1:76 per day it will be paid for in about 160 days. And as I use the stove about 100 days per year, it means that sometime round about Christmas it will be paid off.

A shrewd move, purchasing this woodstove.

We’d been radioing today, and that wasn’t without incident.

Radio Tartasse at Marcillat en Combraille forgot that we were coming (despite me reminding them on Friday) and so nothing was prepared, which meant that we had to make it up as we went along.

But at Radio Arverne in Gerzat the wheels fell off completely and we had to re-record one of the programmes a couple of times, as well as do some heavy editing, before we had a decent take.

But there’s a reason for that.

Liz didn’t have much sleep thanks to a hyperactive mind, and I had about one hour because, presumably, I have a guilty conscience about something or other.

Walking outside beating the bounds of my property here at 05:15 in the freezing weather because I can’t sleep – that’s a new one, isn’t it?

sunset site ornithologique st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome franceOn the way back from Liz and Terry’s as it was going dark, I stopped at my favourite spot – the birdwatching site at the back of St Gervais d’Auvergne – yet again.

We were being presented with the most magnificent sunset as the sun slowly sank beneath the heavy clouds.

If ever a moment called for the camera, then this was it.

sunset site ornithologique st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome franceIt was even more interesting to stand there in the dark and watch all of the lights swich on one by one, like some kind of carpet of bulbs spreading out across the landscape.

And of course it called for a repetition of that well-worn old saying –
“Red sky at night – shepherd’s delight”
“Red sky in the morning – Les Ancizes is on fire”.

And that’s not all of it either. I also fixed the non-working flasher on Caliburn and readjusted the fan belt on Liz’s car.

It’s been a busy day today and I’m off to bed now – thoroughly exhausted.

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Sunday 28th October 2012 – BRRRRR!!!!!!!

puy de dome franceIt’s absolutely freezing outside. And I mean that too. Minus 1.6°C outside when I took the stats just now.

And it’s been cold all day as you can tell by just looking at this photo of the Puy-de-Dome that I took from my usual haunt – the birdwatching site at the back of St Gervais d’Auvergne.

Winter has arrived, early as we predicted exclusively on these pages just 10 days ago, and we are still in October too.

puy de sancy puy de dome franceAnd just look over there at the Puy de Sancy and the Mont Dore. It’s more like Mont Blac over there right now. And those heavy clouds are threatening more punishment

And the snow isn’t just scattered over the high ground either. There’s piles of it in the middle distance too.

When that lot was unleashed last night, we were still on SUMMER time would you believe. The weather has gone totally crazy.

So this morning with the extra hour in bed, I was up and about at 09:20 and after breakfast and the usual paperwork, I spent a couple of hours doing some housework, cleaning and dusting and the like.

It’s certainly been such a long time since I’ve done any, and I can actually see some floor now.

This afternoon I went out to Terjat to watch AS Terjat play Neris les Bains’s 2nd XI.

An Allier Division 1 match, theoretically the same level at which FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 1st XI play, but there wasn’t a single player out there whom I would chose for my team. The quality really is quite poor in the Allier.

Neris-les-Bains are quite high up in the league and AS Terjat are mid-table, yet you wouldn’t have thought so from watching this match.

The first half with AS Terjat kicking into a howling wind, the match was played mostly in the Terjat half, but Neris-les-Bains were to all intents and purposes clueless in attack.

In the second half, playing with the wind, AS Terjat scored 2 goals in quick succession and as the wind dropped, Neris-les-Bains scored late in the game, due to a defensive howler in the AS Terjat penalty area.

fter that I went to Liz and Terry’s to rehearse our Radio Anglais programmes for the coming week. Liz made a lovely tea and I had a nice warm shower for which I was grateful.

Back here though it’s freezing and I was sorely tempted to light the fire up here. November 17th was the first fire in 2010 – November 27th was the first in 2011,but the first fire in October is just crazy.

If it’s as cold as this tomorrow and I’m in all evening it will definitely be lit.

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Friday 30th March 2012 – WE WERE RADIOING TODAY …

… and so that involved a trip to Gerzat.

In the gorgeous glorious sunshine as well, even though it was less hot today.

This morning was therefore printing stuff off, and then going off to Sauret Besserve to pick up Liz.

We recorded 5 programmes, ao as to get ourselves well ahead of the game seeing as I’m having serious thoughts about going for a holiday again. I have the wanderlust, don’t I?

And then back home, via Liz’s to drop her off and for some coffee and vegan ginger cake.

birdwatching site ornithologique st gervais d'auvergne gouttieres puy de dome franceOn the way back I stopped off at the birdwatching site at the back of St Gervais d’Auvergne to take a few pics with the new zoom lens that I bought a while ago.

Again, it’s manual focus and that is causing a few difficulties.

And I’m beginning to realise that this was not the best of my decisions. Only one of the photos was worth keeping, and this was a shot of the church at Gouttières, about 10 miles away.

And you can see, running from to centre to mid-right the road that I take when I go home.

So, like the 50mm lens, it will work eventually and do the business once I can work out how to get it to do what I want.

Back here, I had the TV on again and watched a DVD of Steppenwolf Live at Louisville, Kentucky.

I bought this ages ago but the little DVD player didn’t go it justice. The new AKAI though is magnificent and the sound, turned right up as befits any rock concert, is the best CD-type of stereo player that I have around here.

I just hope that this TV lasts the pace. If I can get 5 years out of it, it will be excellent

But one thing about this Steppenwolf concert – there are only four musicians on stage. John Kay on vocals and guitar, another guitarist, a drummer and a keyboard player. No bassist.

But never mind how you can possibly play “Born To Be Wild” and “Pusher” (to name but two tracks) without a bassist, there is nevertheless a bass being played somewhere out there, and it’s not being done on the foot pedals of the organ, as I once saw the famous bass line of Darkness (11/11) played on stage by Van Der Graaf Generator when they didn’t have Nic Potter with them. It’s definitely a bass guitar

Overdubbing at a later date for the DVD? Perish the thought.

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Thursday 17th November 2011 – HAVE A CLOSE …

gorges de la sioule puy de dome france… look at this photo and see if you can spot where the Gorge de la Sioule might be.

It’s one thing I like about going out to Liz and Terry’s early in the morning – the fact that they live right on the edge of the gorge. And because the gorge is so deep and so steep the sun can’t shine into it until it has well-risen.

That means that the surrounding ground is quite warm whereas at the bottom of the gorge the air is quite cold and damp. And when the sun is high enough to enter the gorge it dramatically heats the cold damp air and you have clouds of condensation rising up from the gorge quite spectacularly.

Liz had to do some kind of newspaper interview the other week, in which she described the Combrailles as “The Land That Time Forgot”, and you can see clearly exactly what she means by that.

mont dore puy de sancy puy de dome franceBut it’s not just that view from here (in case you haven’t guessed, we’re at the bird-watching site at the back of St Gervais d’Auvergne again) that is spectacular. There’s a spectacular view across to the Puy de Sancy and the Mont Dore away over there.

All swathed in a hanging cloud or two too.

And if I’m not mistaken, I reckon that I can see some snow up there too. Winter is definitely icumen in. Lhude sing Rudolph

It’s a litle-known fact that when the system of départements was created, what is today the départements of the Puy-de-Dome was to be called the départements of Mont-Dore – which is after all the most significant feature of the region. However, the locals objected, saying that it sounded too much like the mont d’or – a mountain made of gold – and would give the impression that this was an extremely wealthy region.

And so today Terry and I bricked up one of the doorways (their house is two small cottages knocked into one) and fitted the window in the upper half, and then fitted the new door in the other doorway.

And it wasn’t as straight-forward as you might think either. The old doors had been made-to-measure for the doorways and of course, as we discovered as we were trying to fit everything, the door openings were not built straight. That was a complication we didn’t need.

Fitting the door was exciting though. We spent 10 minutes trying to make it seat on the hinge pins,and you’ve no idea how easily it fitted when we took out the wedge that was trapped underneath it.

And we also spent half an hour trying everything that we could to make the door close and you’ve no idea how well it closed when we took the packing strip out of the aluminium closing tray.

Ahhh well. You live and learn, I suppose.

Anyway,tomorrow I’ll be fitting the wind turbine if the weather holds, and now that I have my diamond core drills, I’ll be drilling from the house through into the lean-to and running cables there.

If I’m not careful,I might even have light and power in there tomorrow night.

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Friday 28th October 2011 – HOW LONG IS IT …

st gervais d'auvergne gorges de la sioule puy de dome france… since I took a pic from the birdwatching platform near St Gervais d’Auvergne just up the road from where Liz and Terry live?

Quite some considerable time, I bet.

I was up and about quite early (well, early for me anyway) this morning and after something of a hasty breakfast, in the words of the great Mars Bonfire I got my motor running and headed out for the Highway

st gervais d'auvergne gorges de la sioule puy de dome franceIt was a cool damp morning but it was heating up quite quickly (well, for this time of year anyway) and this was causing the mist to rise out of all the hollows.

It doesn’t half look impressive when it does that, particularly from up here, and you don’t need any guesses to work out exactly where the Gorges de la Sioule might be when it’s like this. It didn’t half look impressive and it’s one of the sights that everyone should aim to see when they come to visit the Combrailles.

Liz and Terry’s house is down there somewhere and sure enough, they were bathed in mist when I arrived.

Anyway, I picked Liz up and we went to Gerzat for the Radio Arverne sessions of Radio Anglais. We were there for just after 10:00 and so we went for a walk around the town for 20 minutes before Bernard turned up.

It took just over an hour to record the four sessions today – even though Bernard was rather … errr … confused and disorientated. He just now has rather a lot of editing to do.

Back at Liz and Terry’s, Terry and I had quite a long chat about things and then I came back here.

It was raining of course after lunch and so in a change of plan I’ve done a huge amount of tidying up on the ground floor and the first floor and it actually looks like something now to a certain degree. I’ve also done some tidying up outside and that has helped, especially as the vegetation is now dying down for winter and some lost articles are now coming into view.

And tidying up as well. How about that? And to tell you the truth I would have been tidying up this afternoon even if the weather had been absolutely gorgeous because there is a cunning plan looming in the background.

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Tuesday 4th January 2011 – It was Terry’s turn …

… to ring up this morning.

“Are you doing much?”
“Not really” (I was chopping wood, as it happens)
“Fancy coming round here to give me a hand with the scaffolding?”
“You need to say the Magic Words”
“Liz is baking bread”

Round at Terry’s we put up the scaffolding on the end of the house wall and attacked the satellite dish. Although Terry and Liz can pick up the Hotbird satellite, Astra 2, which is the British satellite, remains quite elusive. After a few hours at the adjustment we managed to find a couple more satellites, but still no Astra 2. Careful research showed us that the Astra 2 satellite is 4° lower in the sky than the others and so this involved tilting down the dish, but then it was pointing straight into the barn of the house across the road.

Next job therefore was to raise up the dish as high as we could get it so that the antenna would clear the barn. So we built the scaffolding up to 8.5 metres and refitted the brackets and pole so that the dish would be at the highest point possible. Next problem was that the cable wasn’t long enough to reach the dish in its new position but that will have to wait until tomorrow as it was 18:01 (I made a note of that) and we lost the light. And isn’t that a far cry from just about two weeks ago when the light went at 17:20?

centre ornithologique st gervais auvergne puy de dome franceToday though was lovely and the drive down at Liz and Terry’s was magnificent. It was a beautiful Alpine morning with a few scattered clouds here and there.

Not so good here at my house though as I could only manage a mere 158 amp-hours, in contrast with the 195 (for that was what it was) of yesterday. But “only” 158 amp-hours – that’s more than I received in a week just a short while ago.

But it’s freezing again tonight and we may well have a lower temperature than last night’s -8.2°C but tomorrow they are talking about a rise in temperature and rain clouds.But for me I’d much rather have the freezing temperatures and the bright sunshine – my batteries would welcome the juice.

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Sunday 19th December 2010 – THE WEATHER IMPROVED THIS AFTERNOON.

And that was just as well because I was getting rather fed up of being stuck down here.

But today got off to a bad start with someone ringing me up at 09:00 – and on a Sunday too! So they were told to sod off and I went back to bed – but it was hard to go back to sleep once I was awake. So after a while I sorted out the fire and got a nice little blaze going and settled down to finish off the Christmas Special.

The sun came out again after a while and the temperature slowly began to rise – not that you could tell too much in here of course, but I noticed it when I went outside and was digging Caliburn out of a snowbank.

st gervais ornithological site puy de dome franceAfter lunch I set off for Liz and Terry’s for our rehearsal, and fitted in a stop at my favourite photography point, the ornithological centre at St Gervais.

The bit on Holiday lettings – that seems to go on for ages but I was told to do an hour for the Christmas Special and that has, believe it or not, turned out to be 58 minutes. No problems there – bung another Christmas Carol on the end and that sorted that out.

Liz made a nice tea and I got a doggy bag, and I also had a nice shower, seeing as how I didn’t manage to make it to the swimming baths yesterday.

On the way home it started to rain and that is washing the snow away. So I’m just hoping that it doesn’t freeze or we really will be in difficulties with that lot.

And tomorrow is back to work again. I’m plasterboarding.

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Monday 13th September 2010 – We’ve been seeing stars tonight

anglo french group birdwatching centre ornithologique st gervais d'Auvergne puy de dome franceWith our regular haunt being closed for redecoration we took ourselves off to the birdwatching centre at the back of St Gervais d’Auvergne. Marianne brought her telescope and we looked at the stars, and the rest of us each bought something to eat so that we could all have a picnic.

There were about a dozen of us all told, including some new people which is always very nice to see, and we had a very friendly and pleasant time.

magnificent sunset birdwatching centre ornithologique st gervais d'Auvergne puy de dome franceMind you, at least one of us is in league with the devil and I don’t know who – but from a morning that was all grey and dreary the day slowly opened out and by the time evening arrived the clouds had all but gone and we were treated to a most magnificent sunset.

We were out there until quite late and once the skies darkened over, we were able to see some really impressive stars and planets. But it’s a shame that we didn’t really know what we were looking at.

This morning I was surprisingly free from aches and pains and awake even before the alarm clock. Regular exercise must be doing me good. Simon came round for a chat and then he went to work at Lieneke’s, and I had this other radio station on line – it seems that they want to use us for their broadcasts. Things are looking up.

This morning also saw me do my paperwork from Sunday – they are certainly getting their money’s worth out of me.

But next weekend is cup weekend and so I’ll be having a weekend off.

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Sunday 22nd August 2010 – You’ve no idea …

storm lightning birdwatching centre ornithologique st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome france… how long I was standing on the birdwatching point at the back of St Gervaisd’Auvergne, watching this storm rolling across the ridge in the distance – the one that I live just a couple of miles behind.

Nor how many photos that I took either. What I was trying to do was to take a photo of a flash of lightning, and for a while there was plenty of that but I just wasn’t quick enough. And after a while the storm drifted off the the north-east as the wind swung round from the south.

But the storm was impressive from up there and you can see in the pic the sheets of rain that were falling down

I’d been round to Terry and Liz’s to discuss business and the like. We have a lot to organise – including trying to record SEVEN radio programmes at our next recording session. It seems that my trip to Canada (have I mentioned this yet?), if it comes off, clashes with Liz and Terry going back to the UK for a week  and so we will have our work cut out.

But this morning (or what was left of it) and the early part of the afternoon I carried on with the tidying up in the barn. I’ve found tons of stuff I had forgotten all about and which is now all put in boxes, and I’ve cleaned up half my workbench. I can now get into the drawer where the power tools are, and that is real progress.

Once Lieneke’s roof is finished off (and I’ve been saying that for a while now) I can do some more and have the place looking just a little more shipshape. It’s about time, too!

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Monday 9th August 2010 – As you know by now …

birdwatching centre ornithologique st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome france… my favourite photography spot is at the birdwatching point near St Gervais d’Auvergne where there is one of the most marvellous views in the whole of France.

And just as I crested the rise the sun came out from behind a cloud and shone right onto the radio mast on the summit of the Puy de Dome.

It was well-worth a quick stop to take a photo even though, like most photos, it just cannot do justice to the view that we had. Nevertheless I reckon that it has come out rather well and I’m quite happy with that.

I say “we” because I was with Marianne the local journalist on our way down to Liz and Terry’s. They had very kindly invited a few of us round this evening for a drink and a chat. And it’s always nice to be with friends.

lieneke new roofing edge tiles woodwork les guis virlet puy de dome franceMind you, I’d been with Terry – and Simon too – for most of the day as we have restarted work on this roof of Lieneke’s.

Before I tell you anything at all about what we’ve been doing, let me first post a photo of what we’ve actually done so far. Here i this photo you can see that we’ve finished off the main roof. It’s all properly edged and trimmed and you can see the new woodwork that we’ve fitted to support the slates.

building up sloping stone wall lieneke les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut back on the new task today, what we need to do is to build up this edge to a level and then slope the sides upwards to reach the roof.

There was a flat roof here but a flat roof is no good around here, as a couple of modern builders will find out this winter. We have tons of snow and it lies on a flat roof without falling off, gradually melting and as the melt water is locked in by the snow on top the only way for the water to go is downwards. It percolates through the roof and the joints and then drops into the room below. A sloping roof is an essential – and a good slope at that. 40° is not excessive.

building up stone wall lieneke les guis virlet puy de dome franceWe built the scaffolding up at the end and at the sides and ripped off the old roof Once that had been done Terry built a brick pillar at the far edge to make a level with the half of the wall nearest the camera and with the stone pillar that was halfway along the wall

While Terry was shopping for breeze blocks Simon and I filled in the old window space with stones and I may say that we did an excellent job of that And when Terry returned I carried on mixing while Terry and Simon built up the rest of the wall

While I was clearing up, I had a visit from the Jehovah’s Witnesses – the second time that that has happened The first occasion was ages ago and two nice young women; today was some guy with a beard I don’t have an issue with them as long as they don’t harass me If they believe in what they are doing and don’t try to proselytise then that’s fine by me. At least it keeps them off the streets.

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